Packaging World conducted an online survey about "Packaging lessons learned" that we will report on in our July issue. The relatively modest response was surprisingly strong considering that we asked for an "essay" answer detailing your experiences. More than 100 participants shared their story, a number of which were fairly lengthy.
Each of these stories reflected a lesson learned, of which several were humorous, including the following. Frankly, I never expected to be involved with a story concerning the packaging of ostrich feathers, which must be sort of lesson learned for me.
But enough editorial prelude, I'll let the package designer tell her short, but amusing tale:
"I worked on a direct-mail piece that consisted of a clear plastic box that contained a printed piece and a white ostrich feather. Of course, we were on a very tight timeline and didn't realize that when moving these through customs our government decided to hold these up a week longer than expected because of concerns for the bird flu epidemic.
"Once we finally received the feathers, we had to double the manpower in order to get the packaging assembled in time for mailing.
"Who would have thought that the mothballs that the feathers were stored in would cause an allergic reaction in five of the 20 people working on them and they had to be sent home!
"In the end, their rashes cleared up and the mailing got out in time, but what a way to cause panic for a couple of days!"
